It's ok if a project doesn't turn out as planned

Sometimes projects go wrong and it's the best thing that could have happened. Do you find that too? I mean, sure, sometimes things just go wrong and it sucks, but often... it all works out in the end.

I used these fabrics for the quilts for my niece and nephew, but the quilts were actually supposed to be very different. As in completely different. The original plan was to use a custom printed design for the quilt top, but then I ran out of time to have it printed.

Now what?

Then I decided on using fabric from a particular line, but I messed up ordering the fabric somehow, so I really, really ran out of time, because that quilt project needed to be done!

What to do?! There was a bit of head scratching, but then I had some fabric that would be great for the back and I decided to let the back fabric inspire the top. Both for the design and the colours.

When I had finally pulled together this little happy pile of fabrics and knew what I wanted to do, I was kinda glad the project went wrong. Because the colours are so lovely and I thought my sister would really like them.

I had a new plan for what fabric to use but later I had to re-think how I wanted to piece the project. I really wanted to do it one way, but when sketching it out I could tell that it would be both very time consuming and the end result probably wouldn't be terribly elegant.

I actually quite like when projects challenge me in this way. I like when a project that kinda went wrong forces me think on my feet to make things work. I like that kind of problem solving. I kinda prefer not knowing all the answers beforehand.

Maybe that's why I so rarely follow a pattern. When someone else has already done the thinking and experimenting for me it is slightly less exciting.

How do you feel about projects that 'go wrong'? :-)

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